Out on a Limb
by Running Ninja
Summary: Set in Season 2. How many paladins does it take to scratch an itch? Shiro gets a terrible itch between the metal and skin of his right arm and needs the help of his team. All of them. At 3am. Space-dad centric fic: give that man the help he won't ask for, shall we? Previously "Pulling Your Arm."


**To Pull an Arm**

 _A Voltron: Legendary Defender FanFic_

3am. The witching hour. Or, here on this space ship where time was relative, the itching hour. For Takashi Shirogane, it was another hour of the same maddening crawling feeling that had been plaguing him for days.

Shiro's arm itched. Well, a little more than that. The space between his prosthetic and what was left of his human arm burned, ached and pinched, intermittently and all at once. He sat on the edge of his bed, both fists clenched and teeth grating, willing himself not to dig his fingernails between metal and skin.

The sensation was, at best, like high-pressure ants crawling and at worst, like bacon fat frying under his skin. It hurt, and he desperately wanted to scratch it. But he knew he shouldn't without-

Screw it. He couldn't do it any longer.

Shiro tunneled his left fingers between his prosthetic and his arm, and pulled. Nothing. He burrowed until he couldn't get any farther, until the tight metal pinched his fingers badly enough for him to wrench them free. He let out a deep sigh.

His arm had worked fine in training today. It had hurt him terribly, and worse than yesterday, but he'd passed his grimaces off as focus. He puffed out a frustrated breath. He really should have addressed this a long time ago. This whole stoic thing was starting to have a lot of drawbacks.

Shiro stared at the space where metal met skin. He knew he had an intact amputation stump there, but he hadn't seen it free of the Galra arm in years. But he had seen it. He'd seen them take his prosthetic off. More than once.

The memories were fuzzy, but Shiro remembered the aftermath of his amputation. He remembered them giving his arm time to speed-heal and wrapping it in compression bandages before eventually sealing the prosthetic to his stump. He remembered them removing the prosthetic occasionally to clean his skin. Letting him sleep with it off, sometimes. At first they removed it once a day, then less. He remembered those times growing fewer and farther between, until they blurred with his usual post-gladiator battle healing sessions and he wasn't sure if they happened at all. He remembered they gave him some sort of medicine applied between skin and metal. Something to let him keep the arm on without needing to remove it. Shots beneath his skin along the flesh that pressed against the prosthetic. Needles, bright lights, searing creams and his own screaming.

Well, that was horrifying.

Shiro gritted his teeth, and drew himself back to the white lighting of his bunkroom and the burning in his arm, willing himself to avoid thinking about those hours strapped to a table.

He puffed out a short breath. Even without the torturous memories, this itching could drive a man mad all on by itself. And it was going to.

Shiro took in a deep breath, tried to will his mind somewhere other than trauma and trapped residual limb. "Be strong," he muttered. But the thoughts and the god-awful itching remained. He let a deep breath out. That wasn't helping, and this wasn't going to get better. He couldn't do this anymore. Sleep was hard enough with night terrors, and impossible when you added his human body slowly rotting against a cyborg arm to the list. He hadn't gotten a wink of sleep for the third night in a row, and it wasn't going away.

"Skin grows," he said to himself. "And skin needs to breathe. Skin sweats. Skin blisters. Skin sheds. Skin breaks down. You can't keep a prosthetic on forever. So, whatever the Galra did, they had a way of keeping my skin from requiring them to remove the prosthetic. But it must be wearing off now. Why that was necessary, I don't know. Why the heck they wanted a human right hand, I also do not know." Shiro puffed out a breath. He stared at his pillow. There was a dent in it from his head, but he couldn't stand the thought of trying to lie down again. He couldn't do this anymore. He hit the comm switch on the wall, fully realizing that it was the middle of the sleep cycle.

The sound of an open comm link rang throughout the castle, startling Pidge (who hadn't really been sleeping) and waking Allura and Coran (who had Altean hearing and stirred at the slightest rustle of need). There was an audible sigh through the PA system.

Keith sat bolt upright. "Shiro?" He then realized he was just in his bunk and Shiro was over the comm. Keith looked around, relieved to no one had seen his panic.

Then, Shiro's exasperated voice: slow, drawn out, exhausted, nearly desperate. No, actually desperate.

" _Guys…"_

At first, Pidge thought they were in trouble, but she didn't remember pulling a prank. Hunk stirred, and Lance rolled over with a groan.

 _"Guys, I know it's early, but I need your help."_

Hunk scratched his head. "Did we do something wrong?" It was then that the yellow paladin also realized it was a one-way comm announcement, and he didn't need to say anything.

 _"I am willing to cancel drills for tomorrow if you guys get out of bed and help me. I need you guys to meet me on the training deck. No need for uniforms."_

Shiro scrubbed a human palm across his face. This was humiliating. But he would give anything to stop the itching. Anything. He would certainly give a limb. Especially his right upper one.

Shiro paused and then comm-ed Lance's quarters individually. "Rise and shine, Lance. If you don't want drills in three hours, meet me on the training deck. If you do, keep snoozing."

Lance groaned and rolled over. How did Shiro know that he'd try and pretend not to have heard?

A little concerned, Allura and Coran began to get ready in their separate rooms.

Pidge sent her own comm over the system. _"Like, what kind of emergency is this? What sort of supplies do we need? Should we bring our bayards?"_

 _"Pidge, I need your brain. Hunk, I need your brawn. Keith, I need your help in general, and Lance, just bring yourself. Allura and Coran, you can sit out on this one."_

Allura slammed the comm button on her wall. _"I will do no such thing! Whatever you need, we will be there to help."_

The ping of Shiro's comm reply rang, then silence. After a while, Shiro let out one long dad sigh over the castle's PA system. Then the announcement ended.

Pidge scratched her head. Hunk yawned. Lance groaned. Keith looked at his knife and decided to bring it, just in case.

* * *

Ten doboshes and all of team Voltron was on the training deck in various states of dress, sitting crisscross applesauce like it was space-damned kindergarten. Except for Shiro. He stood in his usual earth clothes sans jacket, arms crossed, tapping his foot as if waiting for someone.

"Shiro," Pidge said, "We're all here."

"Ah, yes, thank you, Pidge."

"And it's 3am." Hunk yawned.

"3:30," Keith said.

"How are you calculating that? It's space!" Lance yelled.

"Never mind that," Allura said, "How are you feeling, Shiro?"

Shiro sighed. "It's no secret I have trouble sleeping. It's also no secret I have a robot arm. Usually, those things are not connected."

"Except for the flashbacks," Pidge said.

"Yes, except for the flashbacks," Shiro said. "Speaking of connections, this arm can come off."

Everyone's eye's got much wider.

"Usually. It's been attached to my arm for possibly a year now, without being removed once. That's bad. That's very bad."

"Wait, it's not fused with your body?" Lance said. "I thought you were a cyborg!"

"You can call me whatever you want, Lance, but I remember the Galra taking this arm on and off. The whole thing. Human skin cannot stand being pressed against metal permanently. Skin grows, sheds, sweats, and blisters—especially in a gladiator ring. Metal doesn't accommodate that. Those materials don't mesh together long term especially when one is TRAPPED INSIDE THE OTHER." Shiro stopped to collect himself, avoiding the gazes of his concerned—and slightly terrified—teammates. He sighed again. "Even with fusing, skin rejects metal at some point if it is literally never cleaned or allowed to breathe."

"And this is that point," Pidge said.

"Yes. I need to remove the arm."

"But, just a guess here," Hunk said, fingertips touching. "You can't."

"Exactly. While this thing isn't completely attached to with my arm-" He rolled up his sleeve and wedged the tips of three human fingers into the gap to prove it. "-it is sealed there somehow. There is a release mechanism, I know it. I remember them using it."

"But you said it hasn't been used in almost a year," Lance said.

"Yes. Most of that year was after my escape thanks to Ulaz. The rest were when the Galra used anti-rejection medicine or whatever it was they were dosing me with between arena fights."

"Wait, anti-rejection meds like when people have transplant organs?" Lance asked.

"No, because this is an external rejection, not an internal one like when you get a kidney that doesn't match. More like a med to stop skin growth or sweat or something. I don't know." Shiro sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose with his human hand. "The point of it is, this thing freaking itches and I can't stand it anymore and it can come off and I don't know how but I need it off by the morning or so help me I will carve it off shoulder included."

"Whoa, Shiro," Keith said. "Don't worry. We'll get it off."

"Yes, I'm with Keith. No carving. You said there was some sort of release mechanism?" Hunk asked.

"Yeah. They did something and the arm released and was loose enough to just pull off. It made an air-like noise."

"Like a pressure release!" Pidge cried.

"But he can get three fingers in there now, wouldn't that break the pressure?" Hunk asked.

Pidge held her mouth. "His skin's been growing. Maybe that affected the seal?"

"Wouldn't that break the seal and release the arm?" Hunk said.

"You'd think so," Pidge said. "Especially since that would be a good safeguard against necrosis in the residual limb if the body basically shed the prosthesis if left on too long."

"I don't think the Galra were particularly interested in Shiro's health without them," Allura said.

"Especially not if they cut the arm off in the first place," Lance said.

"Enough of this!" Keith stood. "Shiro, give me your hand."

Looking more exhausted than skeptical, Shiro offered Keith his Galra arm. Keith looked at it and gave it a glance, palpated the place where skin met metal.

"Shiro, does that hurt?" Allura asked.

"It itches like hell—excuse me, princess—but no real pain—ahhh, okay that did hurt," he said as Keith wrenched his arm.

"Keith," Coran said, "Perhaps brute force is not the best technique in this particular situation."

Keith grunted in anger and pried more at the metal. Something was hurting Shiro, and that thing had to die. He pulled on Shiro's arm to no avail.

"Keith, you can't expect it to come off just by pulling," Pidge said.

"Yeah, if that was it, everytime Shiro pulled something he'd lose an arm," Hunk said. "Like, if he tried to get a juice out of the fridge and pulled on the door he'd just have a hand around the handle and nothing on his shoulder. And definitely no juice. That would be sad."

"He still has a shoulder," Keith growled. "It's his hand that's replaced."

"If it's not fused to you, how does it stay on?" Lance asked.

Shiro shrugged. "You're asking a druid experiment about how their science works. Or magic. I have no idea. Maybe it's the seal. I just know that it does. And I know it can come off."

"Correction," Coran said, "You just know that it could come off. In the past. We have no indication as to whether or not that has changed."

"Look, I don't care how you guys do it, but please, please make this arm stop itching. It has been days." Shiro let out an exhausted breath. His voice broke. "I can't sleep."

Keith regarded Shiro with concern, and then turned his arm to inspect it more closely. "Are you sure there isn't anything connecting you to the arm internally? I wouldn't…want to break you."

"I'm sure," Shiro said.

Keith lifted Shiro's arm and bicep over his head, looking at it from underneath. "Pidge, can we get like an X-ray or something on this?"

"On it," Pidge said. He lowered the arm for her as she stood and walked to them, eyes glued to her tablet screen as it scanned Shiro's arm and popped the resulting image in front of her. "It looks like Shiro's organic matter and the Galra tech are inherently separate, though there has been some slight…adhesion. And it looks like Shiro's arm extends about—" she tapped below Shiro's elbow with the side of her hand—"here."

That meant Shiro had more arm left than pretty much everybody assumed. Shiro's prosthetic essentially cupped his arm starting below the elbow and right up to below his delt.

"Wait, Shiro has an elbow?" Lance asked.

"That's a lot of opportunity for a seal that would be hard to break," Hunk said. "It's surrounding a lot of flesh if that's the case."

"It is the case," Pidge said.

"Yes, of course. But it does mean you have more arm than we thought," Hunk said.

"Yeah," Shiro said, "The fact I still have an elbow isn't really news to me. Other than not knowing how to remove my prosthetic, I know my own body."

"The prosthetic isn't technically part of your body, so you can omit that qualification," Pidge said.

"Pidge, can you hack the arm?" Keith asked.

"Good thinking, Keith!" Shiro said.

"What? It's what she always does," Keith said. He was still holding Shiro's bicep.

Pidge typed furiously into her computer. "I'll need a direct link. The Galra designed the arm so that it's not externally hackable." Except with the emergency kill code she'd designed, of course, but she didn't mention that. "Lance, can you go get me my laptop and the connecting cable that lets me hook my laptop up to the port in Shiro's arm? I'm going to need some detailed schematics. This isn't a quick fix. Those druids cooked up something stubborn."

"Ooh, cooking," Hunk said, giggling. "I think I'm rubbing off on you, Pidge. Speaking of which, who is cooking breakfast?"

"It won't be permanent, Shiro," Keith said. "I promise."

"Yeah, so what does that cable look like?" Lance asked from across the deck.

"It's grey with a light blue thread-like stripe on the wiring cover," Pidge said. "Looks sort of like an earth USB. You can find it in my room on the desk next to the moon rock paperweight but underneath the analysis papers from that time we had to calculate wormholing by hand."

"Oh, great," Lance said. "I totally remember that." He was lying.

"Oh, yeah," Coran said. "That took forever. Finger counting had to be more of a science than an art that day."

"Coran," Allura said quietly, "If the paladins do manage to remove Shiro's arm, do you think he'll be willing to put it on again?"

"Good point, princess," Coran said. "It has always been a part of himself he hated."

"Shiro's a good man. He doesn't want that attached to his body. Even if it didn't itch badly enough to rouse the whole castle at 3am, he'd still want it off."

"So would I, princess," Coran said. "It was essentially a torture mechanism. Psychologically, it severely haunts him. He used it to kill, presumably."

Allura's eyes softened. "He does need sleep," she said. "I don't think those dark markings under his eyes are typical for humans. None of the other paladins have them, at least not as severely as he does."

Coran nodded. "You are right indeed, princess. Shiro needs help."

"Hunk, get over here," Keith said. "Take Shiro's wrist."

"Okay," Hunk said. "Wait. Are you proposing…?"

"That you yank Shiro's arm until it pops off?" Pidge asked. "Keith, that's a terrible idea."

"Well, I don't see a lot of options. Pidge, pry your fingers between the prosthetic and Shiro's skin, see if you can loosen the seal. Hunk, pull Shiro's arm. I'll hold his chest and pull him in the opposite direction."

A part of Shiro wanted to protest. The other part just wanted the itching to stop. So he said nothing when Hunk and Pidge looked at for approval from their leader and Keith wrapped both arms around his chest and braced his feet.

"Alright. On my mark," Keith said. "One." Hunk took Shiro's hand and gulped. "Two." Pidge pried eight of her fingers in between metal and flesh up to her first knuckle. The metal pinched her so tight she didn't know how long she could hold this. She was about to insist there was a better way when she realized she actually couldn't get her fingers out.

"Three." Keith yanked with a yell, Shiro appeared to be praying, and Hunk started to sweat. Grunts filled the training deck as two of them played tug of war with their leader, and Pidge yelped because pinching your fingers between Galra metal and your space-dad's svelte bicep was rather painful. She was also lifted off the floor in the process.

Allura and Coran just watched. "Look at them go," Coran said, admiring their strain, struggle, and for Pidge, screaming. "Should we let them know about the anti-itch gel we have in the first aid room?"

"No," Allura said. "This is quite the bonding exercise."

"Pull!" Keith yelled. "Hunk! Pull!"

"I am!" Hunk yelled.

"Pull harder!"

"This isn't doing anything!"

"PULL HARDER!"

"Again, bad idea!"

Shiro locked eyes with a panicked Pidge. Neither said anything.

"I said pull! Put your yellow lion into it!"

"What do you think this is? I am pulling! But Shiro's got connective tissue, and I don't want to dislocate his shoulder or the elbow he apparently has! Or just hurt him in general. Shiro, I am very sorry."

"It's fine." Shiro had his face pointed at the training deck ceiling, and appeared to mentally be somewhere else.

Lance entered the training deck, the correct cord and Pidge's laptop under his arm. He looked at the other paladins and squinted. Pidge was in pain, Hunk was very nervous, and Keith was applying that blind focus of his into _trying to physically rip off his brother's arm._

"Guys, my fingers are stuck. They are very stuck," Pidge said, her voice high and panicky.

"Pull them out!" Keith said.

"I said _stuck_! That means I _can't_ do that!"

"Here," Lance said, setting down the equipment stepping up behind Pidge. He tucked his fingers near Pidge's to help pry them out and placed and a foot against Shiro's hip. With a pull and a kick he freed Pidge's hands and also sent Shiro, Keith, and Hunk flying into a pile on the deck. "There," he said to Pidge, who was wrapped in his arms, feet still off the floor. "Gotcha." He smiled at her. She gave him a look that translated to _Are you stupid?_ in every known language.

Hunk, Keith, and Shiro untangled themselves, groaning. Keith avoided any sort of eye contact, Hunk panted, and Shiro looked almost disappointed.

Pidge rubbed her fingers, sucking the worst-pinched of them. She glared at Keith, deciding between red and blue for which paladin she was madder at. She groaned at Keith. "I could have lost my fingers back there. And what's a hacker who can't type?"

"Well, we have to keep trying," Keith said, getting to his feet.

"What? No, Keith, let me run some diagnostics first," Pidge said.

Keith groaned. "We don't have time for this!"

"Keith, it's fine. I can hold on long enough for Pidge to do some math," Shiro said, sitting as Pidge plugged him into her computer.

Keith sighed, frustrated and impatient. Pidge flapped her hands to get the feeling back into them again before typing furiously into her laptop.

It was then that Shiro almost wished he hadn't said he could wait, because now the itching was back in full force. He clenched his jaw. Keith noticed, and glared at him for lying.

"I'm not seeing any sort of release switch on the schematic," Pidge said.

"Try running an advanced anti-encryption series looking for any coding related to removal of the arm," Hunk said. "They'd try and hide the existence of any way to remove the arm, right? The Galra probably didn't want Shiro's arm coming off without them having a say about it."

Pidge typed another series of coding into her laptop. "Ah ha! I found a release switch!" she cried. "You were right, Hunk! They used an extra layer of coding to conceal existence of the switch. I didn't think to hack that far in my previous scans of Shiro's arm. I had no idea it could come off, after all. Shiro, give me your hand. It's on the outside of your prosthesis, just above the elbow."

Shiro offered her his arm and she took it and found the location of the switch. She pulled a pin-like instrument out of her pocket and inserted it into a notch in his arm to remove a panel and then flipped the switch underneath. Nothing happened.

"Okay…" Pidge said, toggling the switch. "I'm definitely in the same spot as the diagram, so I guess this is an incorrect schematic… somehow…."

"Here, let me try," Hunk said, flipping the switch. "No, nothing."

Lance tried. "Okay, nothing for me either. That leaves you, Keith."

Keith examined Shiro's arm and squinted at the switch. Then he used his finger to flip the switch.

There was the sound of air and a groan from Shiro and his prosthetic shifted. Without hesitating, Keith grabbed the prosthetic and pulled. It peeled off of Shiro, leaving shreds of skin and releasing a stench.

"Ew, oh god," Hunk said. "That needed to happen. That really needed to happen. But wow. I don't feel good." Shiro had his eyes closed, body slack with relief.

Keith started peeling dead skin off of his brother-figure's arm—something that might have caused the latter pain, but didn't cause him to so much as tense—while Pidge inspected the pieces of prosthetic that had been flush with Shiro's skin. They were disgusting, covered in skin slough and yellow crusties. Thankfully, no black necrosis. And Lance just stared at the aftermath of wearing a grody Galra gauntlet for too long. Then he swallowed and helped Keith finish cleaning Shiro's skin.

"I'm going to go get something," Hunk said, retching. "I think we need a damp cloth right now. And gauze. And like, saline or something." All five of the paladins had received first aid training at the Garrison, though some paid more attention to aseptic technique than others, which explained Lance and Keith using their bare hands to remove Shiro's dead tissue.

Once the slough was removed red and irritated skin was revealed, raw from the continuous pressure, unrelieved friction, and lack of air. It was inflamed from bacteria growing in the dead cells and breaking down the skin even more. It colored Shiro's arm like a sleeve everywhere the prosthetic had been.

Shiro dug into the tip of his residual limb with his fingernails. "Wait," Keith said. "Shiro, I know you can't see your stump right now, but it's really red. You're going to make it bleed if you scratch at it."

Shiro puffed out a breath and then opened his eyes. "Alright." Then he saw his arm and all the removed debris and his mouth fell open. "That's… that's horrifying. I smelled it but…wow, that's—that's a lot."

"Too much longer and your arm would have started to die under there," Pidge said. "Infection would have set in. We might have had to amputate up to your shoulder. It's…it's really good you came to us, Shiro,"

Shiro offered a small smile.

"And whatever the Galra gave you to prevent this, it lasted a really long time," Pidge said. "This could be much worse."

All four of them looked at Shiro's arm, now clean of dead skin thanks to Keith and Lance. It was still right-arm-of-Voltron red with some parts looking worse than others. A thick surgical scar divided the tip into two sections where his skin had been sown together again after removing his hand.

"Those Galra are messed up," Lance said, watching the scar. "And Keith, how were you able to release the switch?"

"I guess…because I'm Galra?" Keith said.

"Oh," Lance said. "I guess that makes sense."

"It does," Shiro said, taking the damp cloth from Hunk (who had returned) and wiping his residual limb down before pressing the cloth to the end of his stump. It offered some relief. Hunk and Pidge took the rest of the supplies Hunk had brought and started cleaning the most-raw parts of Shiro's arm. "It's a Galra device," Shiro said, "So they probably wanted some sort of insurance that I couldn't release the arm myself if I found the switch. So I guess they made it a Galra-only operated part of the arm." Hunk and Pidge finished cleaning. Shiro tilted his head back and closed his eyes, fingers wrapped around his upper arm, above where the prosthetic had been, finally able to relax. "And I need sleep. Thank you guys for showing up."

"No problem," Lance said. "It's the least we could do for all you've done for us… and all that you've been through."

"Do you need any thing else?" Hunk asked. "We can check out the first aid supply closet for you."

"No," Shiro said. "And really, team, thank you. I haven't felt this good in a long time."

"Anytime," Keith said.

"Don't worry about it, Shiro," Hunk said, patting him on the shoulder.

"We're a team," Lance said.

"I'm just glad that thing's off now," Pidge said.

Shiro smiled at them, chest lighter and eyelids heavier.

"You're sure we get to skip morning drills, right?" Lance asked.

Shiro laughed. "Of course. I, at least, am going to get some well-deserved sleep."

"Amen to that."

"I agree."

"You earned it, buddy."

"Take it easy, Shiro."

Everybody smiled at Shiro, and Pidge inspected his residual limb once more, turning it over. "There's a lot of skin breakdown. Probably better to leave the Galra arm off for a couple days to let your real arm heal."

Shiro smiled. "Fine by me." The others began to drift off to their quarters, Hunk taking a moment to clean the prosthesis (and the floor) despite his nausea. He left the arm with Shiro. Then they departed, all pleased with the night's work.

As they left, Shiro's gaze fell to the empty arm on the floor. He thought of moving his fingers and saw the fingers of the arm flicker to life. He rotated his wrist mentally and it copied. The other paladins didn't see because they had left, but Allura drew close to his side, sat beside him. "It's still a part of me," Shiro said to her. "That didn't sever the link."

Allura looked at the side of Shiro's head, where the black hair was less buzzed. She raised her hand. "May I?" she asked.

"Um, yes," Shiro said, a little confused.

Allura brought her fingers to the left side of Shiro's scalp and felt through his hair. Felt the scars, the little ridges and bumps under his skin from implants in his skull above his motor cortex. Shiro slumped a little when he realized what she was finding. "You seem to have some sort of electrodes on your brain," she said. "Likely they are receptors for the skeletal-muscle signals that would control your right arm."

Shiro sighed.

"You aren't planning on having the paladins remove those, are you?" Allura asked.

"No," Shiro said. "Brain surgery seems beyond even Pidge at the moment. I think those are there to stay." In front of him, his hand tightened into a fist. "I hate being part Galra," he said.

"So does Keith," Allura said. "And it took me a while to come around, but I judge neither of you for it. It's not a choice you made. This was done to you, Shiro."

Shiro sighed. "I just wanted out." He looked Allura in the eye. "It was the itching, though," he said. "It really was the itching that had me comm-ing all of you here at 3am human sleep cycle time."

"It's fine," Allura said with a smile. "I understand the desire to leave your past behind. Zarkon's actions haunt us all."

Shiro sighed again.

"If I had a groggery for everytime you sighed," Allura said, "I would be a very wealthy princess."

Shiro smiled at her. Then he looked at the prosthetic, now limp on the floor. He remembered the time he'd saved Pidge with it when they were rescuing the red lion, all the times they'd survived—and he'd survived—because he had a druid arm. He clenched his teeth. He hated that thing. But did he hate powerlessness more?

"Shiro," Allura said, her eyes soft. "Please know that if you put that arm back on, no one will judge you. We all care about you, and none of us think any less of you for what happened to you in the arena."

"What I did."

Allura was silent.

"People keep phrasing it like I was innocent, but I had choice in whether I fought or yielded. And I never yielded. I did whatever it took to survive. Whatever it took to prove them wrong."

"You still prove them wrong everyday," Allura said. "This isn't a choice anyone will judge you for."

Shiro puffed out a long breath. "Well, at any rate, I won't be ready for that thing for a very long time. My arm needs to breathe. It needs time. Pidge is right. I need time."

Allura's eyes drifted to Shiro's right arm. "May I?" she asked.

"Why, yes," Shiro said, a little taken aback.

Allura inspected his stump, almost clinically. The muscles in his forearm hadn't atrophied. They must still be have gotten some use beneath the prosthetic. She traced the surgical scar across the inflamed skin. Her chest panged with empathy for the raw nature of this once-healed wound in body and soul.

"Pretty, gnarly, huh?" Shiro joked.

"Gnarly? I'm afraid I do not know the Earth term."

"Oh," Shiro said. "Never mind." He then thought of a painful dad pun about being stumped by the joke.

"I think we have some creams that could speed the recovery, let you get the arm back on sooner." She looked up from his arm and saw Shiro was looking away from her, his breath uneven.

"But we… we don't need to face that decision any sooner than we must," she said, gently releasing his residual limb and placing it against his chest. "And I think we should all get to bed."

"Yes." Shiro smiled. "Me too." And so they each headed to their own quarters.

At the door to the black paladin's bunk, Shiro found Keith. "Keith," he said. "Something on your mind?"

Keith looked away from him. "Pidge said something about last minute bandages, told me to wait here and stall you until you got back."

Shiro laughed. "Well, I have no problem with waiting. I'll sleep eventually." He propped himself up against the wall next to Keith, and rested his head, closing his eyes.

"Shiro?"

"Yes?"

"Do you… do you really feel better with that off you?"

"Yes," Shiro said. "I feel free."

"We still need your bayard," Keith said. "And maybe Alteans have prosthetics like the Galran ones."

Shiro bit his lip. "Keith… you don't need to fix me."

"But I—"

"I am glad for your concern, I really am, but I'll be okay. I'm taking it one day at a time. I'll decide what to do with that arm when I'm ready."

"You… you're thinking of keeping it?"

"Keith… if you could get rid of your Galra half, would you?"

Keith was silent. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know how Galra I am. You're the only family I have."

"Your mother… if she was Galra, what would you do?"

"Do—do we have to talk about this right now?"

"We don't. I'm just thinking. I don't want you to hate who you are."

"I won't. But that arm isn't who you are."

Shiro looked down at his right arm. Raw, red. A little like a certain paladin.

"You always told me my past doesn't define me," Keith said. "Yours doesn't either."

Shiro closed his eyes again. A few ticks passed in silence. "You're a good brother, Keith. You know that, right?"

Keith looked startled. He let out a short laugh. "What's gotten into you?"

"Nothing, Keith. I mean it. You really had my back over there."

"Shiro… I tried to physically pull your arm off."

"That… that was a little ill-advised. But it stopped the itching for a moment, and I can't thank you enough for that. Don't discount yourself, Keith. You are worth so much more than you know."

Keith huffed. "You're kidding me."

"I'm not. You'll make a great leader one day."

"Shiro… stop saying that."

"I don't have forever, you know."

"You haven't even asked Coran about looking for a cure. This is outer space, after all."

"I'll be fine, Keith."

More silence passed between them.

"Shiro, can you promise me something?"

"Anything, Keith."

"Promise me that… that next time you need something, you will call the rest of us?"

Shiro's face split into a weak smile. "Sure, Keith."

"I'm serious, Shiro. I know you still get nightmares. You don't need to do this alone. We proved that to you tonight. We'll show up for you at 3am, no explanation needed. We're a team. Teams stick together. Teams have each other's backs. That's how it works."

Shiro swallowed hard, his chest tight again. Silenced passed between them once more. Keith decided to drop the subject.

"I wonder what's taking them so long," Keith said.

"I don't know. But it's been long enough that I'm going to cool off with a shower." Shiro headed into his room.

"Cool off?" Keith said, but Shiro was gone. "It's like negative 450 degrees outside." He squinted. "Does he not like hot showers?"

Pidge and Hunk reappeared. "Keith!" Pidge yelled, "You won't believe what we found in the castle's medicine supply closet! Coran showed us around and I made all the best selections based on my knowledge of sepsis prevention and also like, Shiro in general. We've got space-penicillin, skin repair gel, plenty of compression bandages to prevent swelling once the pressure breakdown heals up, and even some space-ambien to help him sleep!"

"Yeah, it's really fascinating in there," Hunk said. "You should have seen the shelves. Don't tell lance, but I think I found space-LSD. Definitely some galactic tobacco and maybe even Martian marijuana. That's probably why we've never seen that part of the ship before."

"Wow," Keith said, then paused. "Shiro's in the shower."

"That's good," Pidge said. "According to what I've read, he needs to clean the limb better than what we managed at the training deck." Pidge leaned against the wall and then slid down, triangular pill bottles in her hands.

"How do you know so much about amputees?" Keith asked.

"I read a lot."

"Yeah, about computers."

"I got really interested in the Star Wars prosthetics when I was like eight. I wracked up like a hundred dollars in library fines from all the books on accidental amputation and phantom limb pain and post-surgical care that I didn't return."

Keith nodded, and didn't feel the need to say anything more. Hunk just shrugged.

And so quiet passed between the three of them. Pidge finally broke the silence. "Keith… do you think he'll ever put the arm back on?"

Keith clenched his jaw. "I don't know. It's not up to us. But whatever he does, we will be there for him."

"Yeah," Pidge said, "No matter what, he's Shiro."

Shiro came back out, clad in black paladin pajamas. Pidge gabbed excitedly to her space-dad about the medicine closet and dressed his arm lightly to prevent swelling, just in case, since that was a concern in residual limbs from Earth amputations. She wasn't sure how to do it, but she did her best. And Pidge didn't blink when Shiro turned down the healing cream. She just applied a little vitamin cream instead and moved on. She gave him the space-penicillin, since infection was still a concern, and offered him the ambien. He set it on his beside table, just in case, but didn't take any. He watched it on the table and realized just how thoughtful and caring his team was for their leader, the same leader who whipped their butt in drills and asked them to risk their lives in battle. And while he was getting settled, Keith discreetly cancelled Shiro's morning alarm.

Then Shiro went to bed, and Keith waited outside his door for a nearly half a varga, just in case he was allergic to the alien medicine or something. By 0445 hours human sleep cycle time, Keith peeked into Shiro's room, and found him sleeping, breaths even. So then Keith headed to his own room to lie down, Galra knife under his pillow. Back in the green paladin's room, Hunk had to sit with Pidge until she stopped yammering about space first-aid and quieted enough to drift off. Then he tucked her in and headed to his own bunk. By 0500 they had all fallen deeply asleep. And they all happily hit _off_ when their alarms for 0600 training buzzed.

Shiro slept blissfully. No itching, no burning, no fry-grease feeling under his skin. He breathed easy, as did his limb. He woke late and enjoyed a meal with the rest of the team, though eating with only his left hand was a challenge. He adapted his fighting to compensate for not having a weaponized right arm. He soon settled back into the routine of train, eat, train, eat, relax, snack, sleep. And he thoroughly enjoyed the evening movie nights when his team snuggled up to him and he didn't have to worry about the metal of his Galra arm digging into anyone's back. He loved being able to hug his team and feel them against the skin of his right arm. And he loved them all the more for being the people who had given him that gift.

When he woke for training on the seventh day, skin fully healed, he thought long and hard about whether or not to put the arm back on. In the end, he decided it was like a pair of shoes. It wasn't a part of him, just something he wore and used to fight. And he had no qualms about using a part of the Galra empire against themselves.

Keith shared the same sentiment. And every time he released Shiro from his cyborg prosthetic at the end of a long day, the release felt like an act of defiance, a sort of victory that they shared together over their pasts.

And when Shiro washed his hair, the nodes under his scalp bothered him less and less. His time in the arena had changed him, but it wasn't what had made him black paladin. And calling all his team members at 3am to play tug of war with his fighting limb wasn't very Champion-like at all. And that made him smile. He knew who he was and Zarkon wasn't a part of it. But his team was. And they always would be.

As the movements stretched by, the bottle of space-ambien remained on his bed-side table, unopened. But if he ever needed it, Shiro knew he would call his friends first.

* * *

 **Author note:**

I don't think I've ever had this much fun writing a fic. Thanks for reading!

Anyway, I have some serious inspiration to credit. This fic was basically totally inspired by paladin-pile on tumblr. She's getting/got a degree in prosthetics (I have no idea how old the post is, maybe she's graduated, idk) and wrote a blog with a lot of detail about how in order to be in line with physics the human body, Shiro's Galra arm would (most likely) need to be removable.

Basically, the difficulty arises not from the limits of technology, but from the parameters of the human body. I have a background in nursing, so I ran with it for a fic bc I love when sci-fi and fantasy interact with the medical field. I wanted to explore what Shiro having a removable prosthetic would be like, both physically and psychologically given the fact it seems implied he never removes it. I added a little sci-fi medicine juju to make the first removal fit this timeline so that I could tie in all the plot about Allura and Keith needing to accept Keith's Galra half. It's still not scientifically accurate and air sealing probably presents many other problems but I hope it made for a nice read. I also hope you enjoyed this stroll back to simpler times, when no one was dead or a clone yet.

Please let me know what you think!

And if you want to find paladin-pile's blog post (which I highly recommend), her tumblr name is paladin-pile and the post is called "Ok guys, major nerd-out post here regarding Shiro's arm!" She definitely delivers on the title. And if you google "shiro's prosthetic" (or the title of her post) you can find it because it comes up in the first four options (at least for me). That's actually how I found it, since I don't use tumblr anymore.

Anyway, I hope you have a nice day and enjoy the weather, whatever it is wherever you are.

Peace,

Ninja


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